


A House on Stilts

by Lark (bleedinink)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Fluff, Birthday Party, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, Derek's Birthday, Gen, Happy Birthday, M/M, Surprises, This Is A Surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-06 03:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16823950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedinink/pseuds/Lark
Summary: Derek didn’t like his birthday. To be more accurate: Derek didn’t think he should bother celebrating his birthday and he made sure no one knew when it was. Even Stiles.EspeciallyStiles.





	A House on Stilts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_problem_with_stardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_problem_with_stardust/gifts).



> A birthday present for Jack! Hope this isn't too awful.  
> Based off of some headcanons I have for Sterek and the prompt: "your birthday lands on christmas so no one ever remembers except this year i’ve asked everyone to delay their holidays to throw you a proper birthday bash"

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Derek didn’t like his birthday. To be more accurate: Derek didn’t think he should bother celebrating his birthday anymore. Once Cora came back, they picked up a tradition of going to dinner or spending the day together outside his _actual_ birthday, but Derek made sure to keep everyone else out of the loop. Even Stiles.

 _Especially_ Stiles. (Something Stiles was especially indignant about once they were dating.)

When Cora showed up at their house early Christmas morning, Derek was confused, to say the least.

“Put pants on, we’re going. Don’t ask questions.”

“It’s 6 am.”

“What did I just say?”

With a huff and a grumpy furrowing of his eyebrows, Derek had put on clothes, as requested, and let Cora lead him away from the house.

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“You came to my door at 6 am without a plan?”

“It’s _your_ birthday.” Like that was an explanation for everything.

“I don’t get to sleep in on my birthday?”

“Nope.”

Derek wasn’t sure if Cora’d had a plan going into that morning. In fact, he was pretty sure she was just flying by the seat of her pants if the way she was frantically scrolling through her phone all through breakfast was any indication. Even bringing up Lydia couldn’t bring her attention back to him. (Well, until the food arrived, anyway.)

As the morning got later, Derek started to worry. “Stiles is going to wonder where I’m at,” he’d insisted at one point.

“That’s what phones are for, Derek.” She was clearly very sympathetic to his plight. “You know, if you actually told him it was your birthday, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“I know you’re coming up with _excuses_ not to do that. Seriously, you’re planning to ask him to marry you, but you won’t even tell him your birthday? That’s an easy ‘no.’”

It was hard to argue with her on that point. He looked away for a moment, watching a waitress walk away after delivering another hot chocolate for Cora, who took a long sip before fixing Derek with a serious look.

“Derek.” She held her usual stoic and stony expression, though something like pity rippled just behind. Except that couldn’t be right… could it?

He simply raised an eyebrow in response.

“Birthdays suck. Holidays suck. Believe me, I get it. But here’s the thing,” she started, flicking a crumpled-up napkin in his direction, “they’re not _about_ you.”

“You lost me.”

Predictably, she rolled her eyes. “You know why I let Lydia celebrate my birthday? Why I let _you_ get away with celebrating my birthday? Because it makes both of you happy to do something special for me, even if it’s just something simple. Would I _prefer_ not to have a huge party? Obviously. But I endure it because it makes her happy to do that for me. Plus some other reasons you don’t want to hear.”

Derek grimaced at the last line, then shook his head. “Stiles would make a huge deal about it. I don’t want to be the focus of his holidays.”

“That’s what communication is for, dumbass.” She took another sip from her mug, checked her phone, then turned back to him. “If you’re seriously worried about it, I don’t think Stiles would do anything to upset you. Intentionally, anyway.”

Derek still felt skeptical, looking away again. The silence stretched.

“It’s not about being the center of attention, though. Is it?” He looked at her again, waiting for her to continue. “If that’s all it was, you’d have given in years ago. You don’t want to get hurt.”

“Do we really have to do this, Cora?”

“Newsflash, Derek: you’re gonna get hurt one way or the other. There’s nothing anyone can do about that. But the more things you hide from Stiles, the further you push him away. Self-fulfilling prophecy and all that bullshit.”

“Enjoying those psych classes, huh?” He managed to swerve just in time to avoid being stabbed with a butter knife before being yanked out of the booth and led out of the diner.

It was one of the rare occasions on which Cora drove, though the heightened anxiety levels in the car were absent this time. When the car finally stopped, they both sat in silence and stared at the scene in front of them.

The city had been pressuring Derek for a long time to do something about the charred remains of the Hale house, and after long talks with Stiles, Cora, and a city lawyer, Derek had finally agreed to clear away the ashes. After that, he hadn’t come back to the “house.” The memories were hard enough without another physical reminder that everything was gone.

Instead of the empty field he’d left here several months before, the space had been completely transformed.

“It’s still a work in progress,” Cora shrugged, turning the car off. “But now you can throw your back into it too.”

“How…?” he muttered, staring at the garden sprawling out across the grounds.

“Magic. Literally, for some of them.”

In the distance, Derek noticed a strange structure on stilted legs. “Is that thing safe?”

“Stiles built it, so probably not.” She waved him off towards the tower-like building, turning away and busying herself with something else.

Derek wound his way through the garden, mesmerized by the flowers, bushes, and everything else in full bloom. Sprinkled here and there were small wolf statues and flower beds sprinkled with colorful stones, each with their own uses: for protection, for healing, for tranquility.

He wasn’t quite sure what the grumpy wolf statue eating a cookie was supposed to mean.

Derek wasn’t sure how long he spent wandering through the garden, but eventually he found himself at the center, tears brimming. Circled around him were simple white stones, each of them bearing a name from those lost to the fire all those years ago.

In the center sat a flat black stone, and a tear trailed down Derek’s cheek when he read the name.

_Laura Hale_

Derek didn’t remember sitting down, but the sudden touch of a hand on his shoulder shocked him back to reality. “Happy birthday, dude.”

“You did all this?” Derek looked up at Stiles, bundled up in his winter gear and carrying a blanket to drape over Derek’s shoulders.

“Not by myself. You up for one more surprise?” Stiles grinned, mischief glinting in his eyes.

“Lead the way.”

Getting to his feet, they walked hand-in-hand to the tower that stood at the edges of the garden. “Is this it? I could see it from the car,” he teased, a smile playing at the edges of his lips.

“Ha ha, you’re _hilarious_ , sourwolf.” Once they’d reached the top of the stairs, Stiles turned him to look back at the garden.

“Is that a triskele?” Derek asked, looking over the spiraling flowers. The colors rippled out from the center, each arm taking on taking on several different hues so that the whole symbol covered the rainbow spectrum.

“Yeah, and it was a _bitch_ to put in,” Stiles grumbled, though he didn’t have any complaints when Derek pulled him in for a kiss.

“This is amazing,” he said, pulling away just enough to speak. “ _You’re_ amazing.”

“You’re not too bad yourself, big guy.” The punch-drunk look on Stiles’ face killed whatever “cool” vibes he was going for.

“All right, boys, let’s get this party started before the building collapses.” Lydia poked her head out the door, waving them inside what Derek could only describe as a trailer house on half-a-mile-high stilts.

“Are you sure this is safe?”

“Not at all.”

“Great.”

The house on stilts survived the evening, despite containing the whole pack and a Christmas-birthday party that was definitely not gentle. While Derek was initially ready to assume Cora had told Stiles when his birthday was, it turned out that Stiles, true to form, had simply just used his father’s credentials to pull his birthday from his police record. (An interesting topic for them to discuss later.)

For all his worry and reluctance, though, Stiles surprised him and kept the party from being ‘too much’, and in the years that followed, Derek’s birthday was something they kept for themselves. Some years were more elaborate than others, but they always visited the center of the garden and just sat.

It got harder when restless kids started tagging along, and quiet contemplation turned into chasing Stiles and their children through the labyrinth that the garden had become. Derek didn’t regret any of it, though, and every year he realized more and more that he didn’t really hate his birthday after all.


End file.
